20th Birthday
by prplemyth
Summary: It's Percy's 20th birthday and Annabeth has decided that she will make it his best birthday ever. However, everyone else seems to be making it a little bit tougher than it needs to be, and what's going on with Nico? One shot for Percy's birthday!


_A/N: Happy 20__th__ birthday, Percy Jackson! In book time, you are still in Tartarus, but in the book's timeline, you're turning twenty. Have a lovely, not-eaten-by-monsters day to all!_

* * *

"You should pop out of a cake."

"Leo," Annabeth said, turning to the overzealous boy with the inappropriately huge grin, "I'm not baking a cake large enough to pop out of, let alone am I popping out of it."

"Let's be honest, you're not even the one baking the cake," said Rachel, rolling her eyes.

Annabeth and Leo, who had been arguing for the past ten minutes over everyone else in the room over the logistics of Percy's birthday, turned to her. "Why not?" asked Annabeth. "I can bake!"

"You can cook ramen and fry an egg," said Piper, obviously mentally running through the multiple failed attempts at Annabeth's cooking she had experienced in the apartment they shared with Rachel. "That so doesn't count as baking."

Annabeth shot her a glare. "I can try!"

"You can stir," corrected Rachel. "Especially if he wants it blue and with those wave decorations you suggested, Annabeth, you want a professional on this job."

"And the professional you're suggesting is…?"

Hazel, sitting on the couch next to Frank, raised her hand. "I've never made a blue cake," she said, "but I could give it a whirl. If Rachel helps out with the decorations, I think we could make one hell of a cake."

Annabeth nodded. "Nico, are you good with getting Percy out of his apartment for a few hours?"

"No problem," said Nico. "

She took a deep breath. She was going to make this birthday the best anyone had seen. Or something. Either way, it was going to be awesome.

"Already everyone, you ready?"

The was a smattering of agreement across the room.

"Alright, then meet at the Dare/Chase/McLean apartment tomorrow morning at ten thirty. Break!"

* * *

The next morning, everyone was in place. Except for…

"Has anyone seen Nico?" Annabeth asked. The room was missing the fairly intimidating presence of the lanky son of Hades.

"He called earlier," said Rachel. "He'll be at Percy's before eleven."

"Great!" said Annabeth. "So everything's running smoothly."

Half an hour and a couple of subway stops later, Annabeth realized that everything was not running smoothly.

She opened Percy's door, only to find the apartment lacking Nico.

"Annabeth? You here already?" called someone down the hall.

To Annabeth's horror, it was Percy's voice.

"I thought you said he was going to be gone by the time we'd get here!" hissed Hazel. "Nico had the job of keeping him occupied and everything!"

"Don't blame me!" Annabeth replied. "It's all Baby Death Boy's fault. And I will end him when the situation calls for it. But right now –"

"Hello?" called Percy. "Annabeth?"

"You!" she pushed Rachel, Hazel and Piper into a closet that really didn't fit two people let alone three, and shoved Leo and Grover into the bathroom. "And you! All of you hide where I shoved you."

"Hide?!" asked Rachel. "Fine. But I'm cracking the door open. This is bound to be interesting."

She was proven right within five seconds when Percy walked out of his bedroom in a pair of Batman boxers. Only Batman boxers.

"Good afternoon, Annabeth," he said in a voice that was deeper than usual. "I see you have used your spare key to come as my birthday surprise."

Annabeth could hear Rachel forcing back her laughter in the closet. "Not – not exactly," she said, scrambling for an idea. Sure, she was Athena's daughter, but with Percy shirtless and with her friends behind her monitoring every word, it would be hard for Athena herself to organize her thoughts. "I, uh, was trying to see if you and Nico had left yet."

"Nico?" asked Percy. "What about Nico?"

Annabeth paused. "I thought he was going to go fishing with you today or something. You know, one of those things he likes that I don't."

Percy shrugged. "That's the first I've heard of it. But," he said with a grin, "I have to say, seeing you is a much better birthday celebration." Before Annabeth could react, his fingers were threaded through her hair and he was kissing her in that way that really unfair.

"Percy –" she tried to say, wiggling a little to back away from him, but he just pulled her closer. "You know, just the two of us would be a perfect birthday," he said, nuzzling her neck. "We could do the thing with the –"

"Okay!" said Annabeth, jumping back from him. She felt awful when she saw the hurt expression on Percy's face. "Sorry, I just, um…I tried out some new lip gloss today, but it's really sticky. I don't want it getting all over you."

Percy's look of incredulous surprise was hard to cover. "You?" he asked. "Lip gloss? Really?"

"Yeah!" she said, cursing herself silently for that major failure of a lie. "You know Piper," she said, waving off whatever in hell she was saying, "likes to put makeup on me."

She heard a squeak from the closet and forced herself not to react. Unfortunately, Percy heard it.

"Oh, great," he said, folding his arms over his chest, "now I've got mice in the apartment."

Annabeth took the opportunity. "Oh, I'll check. You get dressed, though. We don't want you getting scratched all over on your birthday!"

He gave her a strange look, but nodded all the same. "Alright," he replied. "See you in a few."

The second his bedroom door closed, Annabeth ripped open the closet door.

"Okay, which one of you –"

But all three girls were laughing with their hands covering their mouths. "Oh, gods," coughed Rachel, "could you two be more hilarious?"

"I always knew you guys were that standard passionate couple," said Hazel, holding back laughter. "But the lip gloss line was comedy gold."

"That boy was on you like a kid on a birthday cake," Piper chimed in, from an extremely uncomfortable position on top of a box of clothes.

"Which is ironic," said Leo, popping his head out of the bathroom, "because –"

"We get it, Leo," laughed Grover. "What are we going to do now?"

"I'm going to get Percy out of the apartment since Prince of the Dead couldn't keep his plans together," said Annabeth. "You guys are in charge." _And I don't even get to help out_, thought Annabeth, a little sad. But she shook it off – she was going to get to spend the whole day with Percy, which, despite the circumstances, was always really nice when it didn't involve a deadly prophecy or people trying to kill them.

"Us?" asked Leo. "Well, about that cake…"

Annabeth and Rachel shot him a look. "No one is popping out of a cake!" exclaimed Annabeth. "We're just having a nice, normal as we can get birthday involving a blue cake and an excessive amount of pizza, dancing, and, knowing Percy, charades."

All of them rolled their eyes. Ever since things had calmed down and the prophecies had slowed to day-long challenges, Percy had gotten weirdly obsessed with party games, the worst of which was charades. He thought he was the greatest of players, but in reality he only chose between about four different movies and it was only a matter of time before someone guessed correctly.

"Can you guys do this without me?" Annabeth asked.

"No, of course not," said Rachel, deadpan, "we're all adults who are incapable of setting up a party. We need your assistance to do anything."

"I take it that you're fine then," Annabeth said, ignoring the sarcasm. "Now go cram yourselves back into your hiding places and pray Percy doesn't have to pee."

Once everyone was hidden again, Annabeth hoped her plan would work. She could work with a little shift in the

Then, hands appeared over her eyes. "Surprise!"

She couldn't help but grin. "Hello, Percy. You ready to head out?"

"Sure!" he replied. "Where are we going, exactly?"

Annabeth shrugged. "I was thinking a little walk. Wherever you want to go – it's your birthday!"

Annabeth saw Percy smile a bit, and took that to mean that he was completely oblivious to the five other people in the apartment.

"I just have to go to the bathroom and then –"

"No!" said Annabeth, her eyes widening. She turned around and looked at the bathroom door that was slowly creaking closed and made a mental note to hit Grover with his own arm when all of this was over. "We, um, we have reservations."

"For what?" asked Percy. "I thought you said we were walking around."

"We are!" said Annabeth. She realized that she had dug herself so far into this hole that she might as well keep digging. "But I made reservations for your apartment to be cleaned up – for your birthday."

Percy stared at her. "Your birthday present to me is an apartment cleaning."

She forced her grimace into a smile. "Yep!" she said, her voice too high and cheery to be in any way convincing. "Happy birthday! Sorry to spoil the surprise."

For the rest of the afternoon, Annabeth kept her phone on silent, and had to keep checking it discreetly while Percy asked her what on earth she was doing. "Playing Tetris," she responded during lunch. "Texting my dad," she replied when he asked while browsing the aisle of an art store. Rachel and Leo kept texting her pictures of the apartment to confirm they that it looked right, and she felt the need to respond to them each time, though perhaps she shouldn't have.

When they were in line to see Kick-Ass 2, she grinned so broadly at the picture of the cake Hazel had made that Percy made to peek over at her phone. "What are you looking at?" he asked. "Can I see?" Rapidly, Annabeth swapped to the picture of herself and Percy that had been taken the previous Christmas.

"Just reliving memories," she said. "Look how cute we look in those sweaters your mom made us."

"You mean the blankets with four holes?" he asked. "Yes, adorable."

Annabeth laughed. "Well, you can't blame her for trying to pick up knitting. She gets bored sometimes with just her and Paul in the apartment now. Plus, the whole painting thing got old for her really fast when she realized she and oil paint didn't get along."

Convinced she had thrown off the conversation, she was able to check her watch throughout the movie to make sure she had enough time to get Percy back to the apartment without having to mindlessly dawdle. And she had timed it perfectly.

"Got any other fun birthday ideas?" Percy asked. "We could go back to my apartment."

"That sounds good," replied Annabeth. She sent a text off to Rachel, letting her know that the birthday boy was on his way,

But when they got to the apartment, they noticed someone following them.

On recognition, Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Do I get to kill Nico now?" Annabeth muttered to no one in particular, glaring over at lanky boy who just walked in the door behind Annabeth. He lifted his head and met Annabeth's eyes, and immediately the small amount of color that had been in his face drained.

Annabeth saw him mouth, "Oh, shit," and begin to back out of the lobby, but Annabeth was storming over toward him before Percy could get a good hold on what was going on.

"Have a nice day?" she asked, tone icy and low. "Because there's a certain birthday boy who was supposed to be out of the house that wasn't."

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed. "Did he find out about the birthday party? My, uh, my dad had one of the stupid Furies kidnap me because Persephone left something she desperately needed or something down with him. Made me bring it back to her, which is really hard when you don't know where that stupid goddess is."

The story seemed a little wooden, but Annabeth's anger immediately relaxed. Parents getting in the way of plans? She sure was familiar with that. "Actually," she said with a sigh, "no. He never figured it out."

Nico smiled, but there was some sort of secret behind it. "Awesome," he said. "Okay, let's get upstairs so the two of you kids can have some fun."

"Me?" Annabeth asked. "It's his party"

Nico nodded, looking frazzled. "Right, right, of course." He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit Annabeth assumed he was doing because he was still worried Annabeth was about to kill him.

However, when she made it up to Percy's apartment, she noticed that there were not only two cakes, but a sign that said, "Happy birthdays and anniversary, Percy and Annabeth!"

For a moment she thought she was reading it wrong (since when has birthday ever been plural?) "They messed up the banner?" she exclaimed. "Oh, no, and I wanted it to be perfect."

"It's not messed up, Annabeth," said Rachel, looking a bit smug. "Read it again."

Annabeth glanced up at the banner, and saw that it wasn't just blue – there was her favorite color, neon green, in the banner as well. Slowly she began to look around, noticing that the blue decorations she had so dutifully chosen were intertwined with green ones, exactly the color she loves the most. "Wait, what?" Annabeth asked. "Why is there another cake? And why is there green?"

Percy grinned. "Annabeth," he said, "did you forget it was our four year anniversary?"

Annabeth went to respond, and then looked around at everyone, who was looking at her knowingly. "I – not – a little?" she replied. The look on Percy's face let her know she would NEVER live this down.

"You gave me so much flack that one time I forgot our one month anniversary," began Percy, laughter in his eyes, "and you forget our four year." He shook his head, still smiling.

"I was trying to get your birthday party to be perfect!" replied Annabeth. "I wanted everything to be great for your birthday and…" She trailed off and suddenly realized the knowing smiles were on everyone's faces. "All of you people knew this was happening, didn't you."

Rachel shrugged. "Percy gave us an opportunity to mess with your head. Do you really think any of us would pass on that?"

"Your birthday was ruined by that minotaur attack," said Hazel. "And we all could tell you had completely forgotten about your anniversary."

"So we decided to do a Percy and Annabeth celebration day," said Rachel. "And now we all get to say we pulled the wool over the famous Annabeth Chase's eyes."

"You guys all managed to keep this a secret while I was right there with you guys?" Annabeth asked, staring at everyone in the room. "How?"  
"You're incredibly predictable," said Nico from the other side of the room. "Did you really expect me to take Percy fishing and then forget about it? I don't have the memory of dead people, you know. Plus, that way we could get both of you out of the house at the same time."

Leo shrugged. "You actually almost made it easy for us. The only hard part was making sure no one jogged your memory about the anniversary. We had to make sure you completely forgot it, or else the surprise probably wouldn't have worked."

Annabeth turned to Percy. "Did you even know about everyone being crammed into various closets in your apartment?"

Percy laughed. "Actually, I thought it was only Piper, Hazel and Rachel in the closet – I saw Rachel making faces out the door – until you got so flustered about me asking to use the bathroom."

"That's when I stuck my leg out the door," offered Grover, "just to let him know why exactly he couldn't come in the bathroom."

"You were all in on this?!" Annabeth asked. The entire room nodded. "How did you people all get your stories straight?!" Annabeth asked. "How? How did I miss this?!"

"Because you were so wrapped up in how you were going to make sure I wouldn't find out that you never thought of what might happen if I already knew." Percy wrapped his arms around Annabeth's shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. "Stop thinking and just have a happy party, Annabeth. How's that sound?"

She had to force herself from frowning. "But this was supposed to be your day," she said, trying not to feel upset. "I don't want to steal the spotlight or anything." If anyone asked her about it, she'd deny it, but Annabeth wasn't the biggest fan of being the center of attention, especially for birthdays.

"You being happy is like me being happy, only with less commitment on my end," joked Percy. "Come on, let's just celebrate our birthdays like we're normal twenty year olds with significantly less divine influence in our lives."

"You want to play truth or dare and have people dare us to kiss, don't you," said Annabeth, fighting a smile.

"Of course!"

With a deep sigh and a bright smile, Annabeth said, "That sounds great."

Percy took Annabeth's hand and they walked toward the living room, and everyone else took that as a sign to join them.

* * *

With all the predictions they had made about Percy's party games, the whole room was right. Percy made them play charades, truth or dare, and "Never have I ever" more times than any of them could count. Annabeth stewed for a while about how on earth they could have all beaten her at her own game but when Percy dared her to eat a piece of cake without using her hands, her attitude changed and she finally allowed herself to stop micromanaging and start having fun.

"This," said Percy with a grin while opening presents, "is a much better present than a room cleaning that you lied about earlier today." He held up the bright blue iPod Nano for everyone to see. "And this one's not going to spark out because of Hephaestus' water protection design this time, right?" He looked over at Leo, who put his hands up.

"I didn't design that," he said, "I just gifted it."

Percy got Annabeth a new set of art supplies, since she'd used up all her old ones on blueprints for Olympus, along with a necklace he said was, "from both me and our moms." It was a thin silver chain with a trident charm, an owl charm, and a four hanging on it. "The charms were their ideas, but putting them on a necklace was mine."

"You managed to talk to my mom without her killing you?" asked Annabeth, surprised.

Percy nodded. "I figured you would love something the most if it was from all of us."

To her surprise, Annabeth felt the pang of happy tears hit her. "It's perfect," she said, squeezing his hand.

* * *

"Percy," said Annabeth at the end of the party, "I just realized – if you knew everyone was in your apartment, and not just me, why did you walk out of your bedroom in your Batman underpants?"

"Because that," he said with a kiss to her temple, "was a taste of your anniversary present for tonight."

Everyone pretended they didn't see that Annabeth went bright red at whatever Percy had whispered, and when the party ended, Annabeth didn't leave.

Instead, there were two pairs of Batman underpants on the floor – it seemed Annabeth had an extra surprise for Percy, too.


End file.
